Subject-centred reasons and bestowal love

Abstract

Speaking roughly, there are two competing accounts of the basis of love. First, the appraisal view: love is based in reasons derived from the valuable properties of the beloved. Second, the bestowal view: love is not based in reasons derived from the valuable properties of the beloved, but love is based in the lover, who then bestows value onto the beloved. While both models deserve due attention, the bestowal model is of present concern. Despite numerous virtues, the bestowal model faces trenchant objections. In this paper, I outline and defend a version of bestowal love, according to which bestowal love is based in the lover’s motivating reasons, and which preserves the virtues while overcoming the difficulties facing bestowal love.

Keywords:

• appraisal love
• bestowal love
• reasons
• motivating reasons
• emotion

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Gary Foster for helpful discussions surrounding these issues. I would like to thank the audience of the 2017 WCPA for helpful feedback. I would like to thank two anonymous referees for valuable suggestions that greatly improved this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dwayne Moore is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. He is the author of The Causal Exclusion Problem (2014), and numerous articles in the philosophy of mind. His current research interests lie at the intersection of mental causation, rationality, philosophy of emotion, and the philosophy of love.

Notes

1 Motivating reasons are reasons that actually cause an agent to act (cp. Crisp 2006, 36ff; Dancy 2000, 20ff; Raz 1975). In contrast, justifying reasons are (epistemically or morally) good reasons for acting. For example, Leontes throws his wife Hermione in prison because he believes she had an affair, but she had no such affair. Leontes’ motivating reason is rooted in his belief that Hermione cheated, along with the jealousy and vengefulness arising out of his shattered desire for her faithfulness. This is not a justifying reason, however, since it is false that she cheated, and, even if she cheated, it is dubitable that imprisonment is an appropriate response.

2 Some flesh this out by introducing “formal objects” of emotions, where formal objects of emotions are attributed to objects and correspond with the emotional response (cp. Teroni 2007, 396). Jennie is fearful of the bear, and the bear is fearsome. While some treat the formal objects of emotions as intrinsic properties of objects, this is not Anthony Kenny’s sole original intent. He stipulates that the formal object is dependent on the subject’s appraisal: “It is not, of course, correct to say e.g. that the formal object of envy is another’s good tout court: one must say that it is something believed to be good and believed to belong to another” (Kenny 1963, 135; cp. Solomon 2007, 161–162; Prinz 2004, 60–63).